This invention relates to a newspaper "mail room." The "mail room" is a term used by those in the art to refer to the area in a newspaper publishing system having automatic equipment for transporting, counting, stacking, wrapping, tying, and carting newspapers in bottom-wrapped tied stacked bundles to the discharge conveyors for delivery to the trucks at the loading docks.
In a known form of newspaper mail room, newly printed and assembled newspapers are conveyed transported by an overhead stream conveyor successively to one or more stackers which function to count the newspapers and stack them in stacks of a preselected number to form stacks of a desired height. The stacker discharges the stacks of newspapers onto one or more conveyors which carry the stacks to wrappers which apply a bottom wrap to the stacks. The bottom-wrapped stacks are then carried to tying devices which tie the bundles. The tied bundles are then loaded in pairs onto one of the carts of an endless train of carts moving along a closed-loop track. There may, in a typical case, be several hundred carts in the train and the train may move about 250 feet per minute. The bundles on the cart are positioned in side by side relationship with the longer dimension, i.e., the headline edges, of the newspapers transverse to the longitudinal axis of the cart. Thus, the shorter edges of the newspaper bundles face the sidewall or gate of the cart.
As the cart track approaches the exit position, the cart track is tilted from horizontal to an angular position 30.degree. from the horizontal. In tilted position, the bundles are stopped by the side gate of the cart from sliding off the cart under gravity forces. Upon arriving at the exit position, a cam at the side of the track lowers the side gate of the cart and the bundles slide off the tilted cart onto an exit conveyor.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,977,513 issued Aug. 31, 1976 to George T. Rushforth, and assigned by mesne assignments to the assignees of the present application, describes a newspaper mail room system of the foregoing type. The Rushforth patent describes an endless track on which an endless cart-train rides; it describes bundles of newspapers pushed in pairs onto empty moving carts of the cart-train; it describes the cart track and carts tilted at an angle of the order of 30.degree. as the cart approaches the exit position; it describes the cart gate cam opened at a proper instant to allow the pairs of bundles on the tilted cart to slide off onto an exit conveyor adjacent and parallel to the cart track; and it describes the bundles delivered from the exit conveyor into the 90.degree. bend of an exit chute.